The Great Flood: Although all humans should know better,
most of them ignored God. It was the all-pervasive
fragmentation which followed the Great Rebellion and catastrophic Fall in
Paradise. Sexual abuse and violence -resulting
from selfishness and personal power- threatened to self-destruct human
civilization. So, God sent a great flood
to make a new beginning. Genesis 9 shows
strong parallels with Genesis 1. In a
way, God makes a new creation, yet now He makes a covenant with his creation,
promising its preservation and the restoration of His Kingdom.
A covenant is a special relationship with God. God reveals himself and gives his good gifts;
consequently the recipients are obligated to respond in thanksgiving and
service. God makes a covenant with his
creation. He reminds all creatures that
He is their creator, and He promises to be their provider. Psalm 104, for instance tells us how God
provides for all creation, therefore all creation is called to praise His Name. If there were no gifts from God for all
people, they would have an excuse not to seek Him. Yet, they owe Him many things, so their
responsibility is serious.
When Paul is in Athens, he addresses an audience that does
not know (much) about the one true God. Perhaps
they considered themselves theological experts, but Paul uses their own
monument (to the Unknown God) to show that they are ignorant of the true God. He then quotes one of their poets,
emphasizing that they already have a relationship with God. Since God has created them, personally and as
a people-group, He is –in a sense- their father. And He is not like some human fathers who
give life to a child and then refuse to provide for it. Since God is (creator & provider) Father
of all people, all are obligated to seek him so they may know him and serve him
in the proper way. They must respect the
Good Father as the giver of all good things.
Therefore they must expect all good things from Him alone, and they owe
him a life of thanksgiving. In fact,
they cannot understand who they are (for instance, in relationship to other creatures)
unless they know their Father.
It is important, though somewhat humbling for humankind,
that God did not create the earth in the first place for our benefit but for
his pleasure. When humans, as
responsible image bearers of God, fell into sin, all of creation was
affected. So, God made a covenant with
all creation. It was not just his
purpose to save some people from an earth doomed for destruction but to redeem
his creation! Yet, God decided to use
human beings to do so, not through environmental action groups but through a
community of people who put God in the centre of their lives. Christ is the firstborn of this New Creation:
He is the one who placed the Father in the centre. Our father Adam messed things up, but in
God’s Son we have another Adam, through whom things are being restored. Now, creation is still groaning for the day
of deliverance, waiting for the sons of God to be revealed! When humanity is purged of all evil, it can
finally be God’s true Image so that God’s power and glory is seen in all
creation.
God loved his creation, the cosmos, so much that he gave
Jesus Christ, His Son, so that through Him we might be saved and His Kingdom
might be restored. For the
hyper-Calvinist it does not sound right that God should love the world. He likes to read, “For God so loved the ones
whom He predestined to salvation…” One
of our past pastors was also sympathetic to this warped theology. “God loves the covenant people, those who are
baptized in the genuine (reformed) church.
About the others, we cannot be so sure!”
In China, the official churches all seem to have John 3:16
posted on their buildings, but the Chinese text reads, “God so loved the people
of the world”. One New Year’s Eve I was
visiting a church service in the Yunnan mountains. Scared by the fireworks outside, a dog
followed his master into the church building.
As I sat near the back, I encouraged the dog to sit and stay. I thought, “No matter what it says on the
building, God loves you too!” and I remembered the passage that tells us “to
proclaim the Gospel to every creature!” (Mark 16: 15)
In a small Canadian church congregation we wanted to
celebrate its anniversary. I was put on
a committee to design a commemorative tile, but local culture prescribed that
we accept the design of a sister who had been among the founding families. Since church was all about ‘covenant’, she
crafted a picture with an ark and a dove.
After we rubber-stamped the design, our pastor groaned with
embarrassment, “It’s the wrong covenant!
We are children of Abraham!”
Somehow we never did do much with the first stage of
covenant history. I guess we could not
figure out how it related to the covenant we dearly loved. Yet, if we take our mission mandate
seriously, we must put it in its right perspective!
All people are recipients of God’s free gifts, and this
gives us a starting point when we speak with those who don’t yet know God. We must tell them about their Father, and
remind them that they need to seek him and live with him. He wants to use us to (promiscuously!) proclaim
his Word to all people (groups), so that those who hear it may accept and
believe that the earth belongs to God and that Jesus Christ is the King of the
Cosmos. After all, that’s what God’s
first commission was all about: Fill the earth- not with human bodies, but with
the glory of God- through a humanity that puts God in the centre. That is the Kingdom of God!
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